Con Coughlin is the Telegraph's Defence Editor and a world-renowned expert on global security and terrorism issues. He is the author of several critically acclaimed books. His new book, Churchill's First War: Young Winston and the fight against the Taliban, is published by Macmillan in London and Thomas Dunne Books in New York. He appears regularly on radio and television in Britain and America.

Hammond's carrier decision makes nonsense of scrapping the Harriers

The short take-off, vertical landing F35B version of the Joint Strike Fighter

Philip Hammond's much-leaked U-turn on which aircraft will fly from the new generation of Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers makes a nonsense of the Government's decision to scrap Ark Royal and the Harriers as part of the ill-informed Strategic Defence and Security Review in 2010.

One of the main arguments advanced by Dr Liam Fox, the then Defence Secretary, for scrapping the Harrier force was that, as we were going for the F-35c conventional take-off version of the aircraft, we would no longer need the skills needed for short take-offs and vertical landing at sea of the version of the F-35 previously ordered by the Labour government. For that reason we could dispense with the services of our highly skilled Harrier pilots, many of whom were subsequently made redundant.

Now, less than 18 months after that decision was taken, the Government has undertaken a massive U-turn, opting for what it argues is the cheaper option of the F-35 STOVL (short take-off vertical landing) version, which means the Navy is going to need to have pilots with the skills set to land these aircraft in force nine gales in the North Atlantic at night in the middle of winter. The only problem is that most of the pilots with the skills to do this have either been sacked, or are now on secondment with the US Navy learning to fly F-18s.

During the problematic SDSR process in the autumn of 2010, much was written about the incompetence of Whitehall's procurement operation. But this latest U-turn makes a complete nonsense of the Government's claim that we could have a carrier "holiday" for a decade. The truth is we need the skills of the Harrier pilots more than ever, and the decision to consign them and their planes to the scrapheap will be remembered as one of the most ignorant and idiotic decisions the Coalition has taken.